


Cinnamon Rolls

by alpacasandravens



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, baker!jon, but could really take place any time after 5x11, it's just jon making cinnamon rolls with a side of domestic hattercrow, just really soft and wholesome, soft, technically I suppose it's an au because I mention joker one (1) time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 22:54:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18822433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: Jon likes to bake, and he's pretty good at it too. He makes cinnamon rolls in the early morning.





	Cinnamon Rolls

Jon dumped the flour into the bowl, carefully measuring out each half cup. He’d made this recipe so many times by now that he could do it by heart, but there was something comforting about consulting the recipe each time and using the measuring cups that meant he still mixed and measured everything as carefully as if it was his first time. Besides, he would never neglect precision when making his fear toxin, no matter how many times he had made it before. Why would baking be different?

He wasn’t entirely sure what time it was. All the window in front of him revealed was that the sun had not yet risen high enough to penetrate into the back alleys of Gotham. The graffiti-covered brick walls and trash cans that filled the back alley his apartment looked out on were still dark, and he almost couldn’t see far enough to make out the Joker grin on the wall across from him from the one time Jeremiah’s followers thought messing with the Scarecrow was a good idea. Somewhere in the distance he could hear car horns beeping, but that didn’t mean much. This was Gotham, after all. Night was when the city came alive.

The gurgling of the coffee pot stopped. Jon poured himself a cup, basking in the bitter smell. He’d been up for more than 24 hours now (how long, he wasn’t sure), but it wasn’t time to sleep just yet. Now was the time to relax, to have a cup of coffee (or three or four) and make cinnamon rolls.

Back before his mother had died, before his father had started his experiments, Jon had loved to sit in the kitchen and watch his mother bake. She’d been terrible at it, always accidentally forgetting cookies in the oven, and one memorable time she added salt instead of sugar to brownies. After she’d died and the house burned down in a fire surprisingly unrelated to the constantly burning baked goods, Jon’s father had given up. The family moved to an old shack his mother had in the family, and Gerald Crane never bothered to do much cooking beyond heating up frozen meals. 

For a long time, Jon hadn’t understood why his mother baked. It was all a rather pointless way to mess up making pastries you could buy ready-made for cheaper. After a couple stints in Arkham, he figured it out. The point was never the end product. He didn’t know if it had been the same for his mother, but for him, baking was about being calm, doing something somewhat mindless and so normal that for a moment, he could pretend he was anyone. He wouldn’t change his life, not for anything, but sometimes there was something freeing about being able to pretend he was getting up early for college or for work, not still up after narrowly escaping being beaten to shit by the Batman.

Jon set the oven to pre-heat and began rolling up the dough. By the time the oven beeped that it was at temperature, he was on his second cup of coffee and had a pan of cinnamon rolls ready to bake and a pan wrapped and in the freezer for later. 

The sun started to rise as they cooked, the smell of fresh baked goods spreading through the apartment as light from the alley outside reached into the kitchen. After he pulled the pan out of the oven and set it down to cool, Jon poured himself a third cup of coffee and sat on the counter in front of the window. The light from outside was warm, and the oven had heated up the kitchen as well. Even with all the coffee, he felt like he could nap right there. Instead, he just smiled to himself and took another drink.

As if drawn by the smell, Jervis wandered into the room. He’d fallen asleep almost as soon as they’d gotten away from the Bat yesterday afternoon, and had been out for what must be over 12 hours at this point. In old sweatpants and a too-big T-shirt (one of his, Jon smiled as he noted the faded academic team logo on the front), he looked a far cry from the Hatter that had made citywide news bulletins the previous day. Still, Jon reflected as he watched his sleepy boyfriend push his hair behind his ear and shuffle into the kitchen, he didn’t look much like a supervillain right then either. The lumpy sweater Ecco had knitted for him, complete with a little orange pumpkin on the chest “to match with your whole theme” wasn’t exactly meant to strike terror into the viewer.

Jervis hopped up on the counter beside Jon. He really wasn’t that short, but the sweatpants were too long, and as he kicked his feet aimlessly, the pant legs flopped around beyond them.

“‘Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words “EAT ME” were beautifully marked in currants.’” Jervis said, looking at the cinnamon rolls in their pan on the counter.

“Not now, they’re still too hot,” Jon said.

“‘Well, I’ll eat it,’ said Alice,” Jervis said with a shrug.

“Of course you will,” Jon smiled wryly. “These are better when you give them a chance to cool down, you know. They don’t dry out as easy.”

“They’re lovely as they are.”

Jon slid off the counter and reached into the fridge with a halfhearted sigh, pulling out a tin of white icing. Humming some nonsensical tune to himself, Jervis popped off the top of the tin and took a butter knife out of the drawer. 

He could make icing from scratch, he supposed. He did every time he made a cake (which wasn’t often - the last time had been for Ecco’s birthday, and that was months ago), but cinnamon roll icing was the one thing he bought ready-made. It was just that he didn’t like icing much - it was too sweet, and it made the cinnamon rolls themselves taste worse. Also, it was difficult to get the consistency right.

“Thank you, dear,” Jervis said, heaping an absurd amount of icing onto his pastry. When it started to run, having been heated up by the roll itself, Jon passed him a paper towel as well. 

The water in the electric kettle started to boil, and Jervis poured some into an Alice in Wonderland mug featuring the Cheshire Cat with his left hand. His right was still mostly covered in icing. As Jervis searched in the cabinet for a particular variety of tea, still holding his right hand aloft and tilting it every time it seemed like icing was about to fall on the floor, the Cheshire Cat on his mug slowly disappeared until all that was left was its grin. 

Sometimes, mixing all the ingredients together early in the morning, Jon forgot where he was in life. The bruises Batman left seemed to be ever-present and never failed to remind him, but for fleeting moments in that calm, he could be a child again, not caught up in this perpetual game. Moments like this were better.

If he could, Jon’s entire life would consist of just times like this, of laughing as Jervis accidentally got his hair stuck to the icing on his hand and rushed to the sink to wash it out. Of the sun spilling into his kitchen as he held his coffee and smiled. The Batman would come for them later, after one or the other of them pulled another scheme and didn’t come away as lucky. The GCPD might even find this little hideout one day. But for now, the smell of cinnamon rolls filled the air as the ridiculous idiot he loved futilely attempted to stick his head in the sink, and all Jon could think was that this was perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> whoever brought up the baker!jon idea again in the Jeremiah server, I blame you for this. (jk ily please continue inspiring me to write Jon being soft)  
> I have the mug Jervis uses, I bought it a couple weeks ago and freaked out when the cat disappeared because it was so cool. Also, I hc Jervis to be shorter than his actor's 5'9" - not too short, but somewhere around 5'6" or 5'7".   
> Comments/kudos always appreciated (aka please yell about Jon with me) I'm on tumblr @alpacasandravens if you wanna yell about Jon there as well.


End file.
